Western Histories

An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations

Yu Tokunaga

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780520976931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles weaves together the narratives of Mexican and Japanese immigrants into a single transpacific history. In this book, Yu Tokunaga moves from international relations between Japan, Mexico, and the US to the Southern California farmland, where ethnic Japanese and Mexicans played a significant role in developing local agriculture, one of the major industries of LA County before World War II. Japanese, Mexicans, and white Americans developed a unique triracial hierarchy in farmland that generated both conflict and interethnic accommodation by bringing together local issues and international concerns beyond the Pacific Ocean and the US-Mexico border. Viewing these experiences in a single narrative form, Tokunaga breaks new ground, demonstrating the close relationships between the ban on Japanese immigration, Mexican farmworkers' strikes, wartime Japanese removal, and the Bracero Program.

Table of contents

• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Subvention
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Exploring Japanese-Mexican Relations in Los Angeles and the US-Mexico Borderlands
• 1. The 1924 Immigration Act and Its Unintended Consequence in the US-Mexico Borderlands
• 2. The Deepening of Japanese-Mexican Relations in Triracial Los Angeles
• 3. Transpacific Borderlands: Japanese Farmers and Mexican Workers in the 1933 El Monte Berry Strike
• 4. Ethnic Solidarity or Interethnic Accommodation: The 1936 Venice Celery Strike
• 5. Japanese Internment as an Agricultural Labor Crisis: Wartime Debates over Food Security versus Military Necessity
• 6. Enduring Interethnic Trust in Rancho San Pedro
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index